Infidelity (13 page)

‘I'll tell you something else, Tom. Teaching this material
really
matters to me. I want my students to be deeply affected by it. I want them to be enthralled. I want them to be
possessed
by it, the way I am. This stuff is at least as important as religion, you know. It's part of our cultural heritage. Most of these students are going to become parents, and I especially want
them
to get it. Do
you
get it, Tom? Or do you still think these are just meaningless chants? Come on –
do you
?'

Sarah shook me playfully and I assured her that I did get it. Of course. But the main thing I got was a flash of what this really meant to her – being a good teacher. I think I understood, given what I knew of her history, that this was how she thought she would redeem herself.

When the time came for Sarah to prepare herself for the journey to Littleton, I felt the familiar tension building inside me . . . and between us.

It had to be said: ‘Sarah, do you really need to go there every single weekend? And for the whole weekend? How bad would it be if you skipped the occasional visit? I know you love the place, but it's so contaminated for you at present, it seems almost like self-inflicted pain. Couldn't you be a bit easier on yourself? What are you achieving by this relentlessness?'

There was a long pause before Sarah replied. She seemed to be taking a little more care than usual putting the finishing touches to her make-up, drawing it out.

‘Considering the things you must be tempted to say every time I leave, you're a model of restraint, Tom. It's one of a lengthening list of things I like about you.'

‘I'm not sure that pleases me. I'm trying to lower my restraint quotient.'

‘Well, this will test you. There is another aspect to this weekending in Littleton I haven't mentioned.'

I raised my eyebrows and glanced at the clock, feeling a stab of anxiety. There was plenty of time before we would normally head for Blackfriars, and we could always call a cab, if necessary.

‘Remember when we talked about whether I'm a callous woman or not? That day by the Thames?'

‘Vividly.'

‘Well, I am being callous in one way, if you want to use that word. Yes, I go there every weekend partly because I do love the place. It has many, many wonderful memories for me and I know one day it will become my true home again. I also go there because I feel I owe it to Perry, given what he's going through. I do feel that. And, let's be blunt, I'm grateful to him for the largesse.'

‘I sense a “but”.'

‘Well, yes. There is a less noble . . . The thing is, I'm absolutely determined to assert my ownership of the house by occupying it, possessing it, for part of every week. I feel it's important to
be
there. I want to make sure no fancy corporate lawyer is going to argue the toss when Perry finally passes away. Everyone was shocked, apparently – his family, I mean – when he chose to install himself in Littleton rather than somewhere closer to the bright shiny medical facilities in Boston – although, if he really was the black sheep, they might have preferred him out of sight. Anyway, he did what he did. But it shocked me, too. It has felt like an assault.'

‘Perhaps that was the one place he'd found some peace.'

‘I don't know. It's more complicated, more contrary, than that.'

‘Contrary?'

‘Oh. Why did I say contrary?'

‘You once said you thought it was like an act of defiance.'

‘Interesting. There's definitely an air of entitlement about this. As if it's payback time. Though payback for what, I wouldn't have a clue. Perhaps I'm just reading that in. Anyway, he's a permanent fixture, that's clear, and I don't want anyone trying to muddy the waters of ownership. It's unequivocally my house. Even though I fully acknowledge he paid every penny of the purchase price, he bought it for
me
. It was bought in my name.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Oh, Tom. I might have been an eager innocent, but I wasn't a fool. I saw the documents.'

‘And he referred to it as
your
house?'

‘Always. Even though he insisted on renaming it Whitman House, once he'd completed the renovations. It was Repton House for about two hundred years, and many people in the village still call it that. They hated seeing the name changed, but that's the Whitman way.'

‘Hmm.'

‘What do you mean, “Hmm”?'

‘Nothing significant. I'm still trying to imagine what kind of man he must be. What kind of family he . . . You never thought of changing your own name?'

‘Never. He never wanted me to. It suited him very well for this woman he saw on weekends to be a Delacour. And for the house to be entirely that woman's responsibility, as well. All the furnishing, the upkeep, the gardening, the housekeeping . . . all came out of my money, not his. I mean the money that came to me.'

There was an eloquent silence as we both pondered the deeper meanings of that remark.

‘So if the house is yours, it's yours. Why would anyone else want it – especially if the family is as wealthy as you say?'

‘You haven't had to confront the Whitman juggernaut.'

‘No. Of course. Okay. Perhaps it's not as simple as it seems. Nothing ever is – I accept that.'

16

I
n my fifth week into the job at Blair, I was summoned to the office of the Death Rey herself.

‘Come in, come in, Mr Harper. Tom, may I? Please call me Jennifer. Coffee?'

Jennifer Rey was in her mid-forties, no more than a couple of years older than me. She was impressive in her way, though neither as accomplished nor as stylish as my amazing Sarah. Standing in her all-white office, dressed in a black skirt and jacket with a white shirt, dark stockings and high-heeled black patent leather shoes, she managed to convey a sense of authority that might have daunted me when I was Darren's age. I could see how it might intimidate Selena and her colleagues. Personally, I was reminded more of a fairy penguin in the snow than a despot. I found I had very little interest in whatever she might be going to say.

Though when she said it, I was riveted.

‘You're a Libran, aren't you, Tom?'

Was this a trick to throw me off balance? Was it a joke? Was there a hint of irony in those bluish-grey penguin eyes? I wouldn't have picked Jennifer as an ironist.

‘Is there a right answer to that?' I stalled, dumbfounded.

Jennifer almost smiled. ‘I'm not being ultra-perceptive. I'm not one of those spooky Pisceans. I just checked your records. These things interest me.'

‘You're into astrology in a serious way?' (I was hoping her grasp of recruitment was better than her grasp of astrology since I am not, in fact, a Libran. She must have misread my birth date, or else she didn't understand cusps.)

‘Isn't everyone?'

‘Not me, I'm afraid.'

‘But you know your own star sign, of course,' she said. ‘And you find astrology columns irresistible, I'm sure.'

‘In the doctor's surgery, you mean? Or at the barber's?'

‘Wherever. Don't you find the whole concept intriguing? As a psychologist, I mean? People so often fit the stereotypes, I find.'

‘So do you see me as a textbook Libran? Is that what you're saying?' This silly game had gone on long enough, especially as we were barking up entirely the wrong astrological tree (though I was amused to find myself picking Jennifer as a classic Taurean – wild horses wouldn't deflect her from her purpose, was my guess).

Suddenly she changed gear – I could see it in her body language as she motioned me to a white leather chair and settled into one herself – and I realised this little foray into astrology might have been nothing more than her version of small talk. She might even have learnt it at management school. Point One: Break the ice by chatting inconsequentially about the person's star sign. Point Two: Don't let the conversation run on too long or become controversial. So I imagined Point Three would be: Say something complimentary about the person's star sign as a bridge to your agenda.

‘Librans are supposed to be preoccupied with balance,' Jennifer said, right on cue, ‘and I can see that in the BI commentaries you've been writing, Tom. Ros has emailed me a number of examples and I must say I'm impressed. In fact, we couldn't be happier with your work.'

I smiled at her, as I had at Ros, as if I were receiving a compliment – though, knowing the truth (about both the job and my star sign), it didn't feel like one. I've never enjoyed praise out of proportion to the deed. I grew up with a mother who was particularly scathing about any attempt to inflate people's self-esteem. ‘If you know you've done well,' she used to say, ‘you'll respect yourself for it. If you know you haven't, unwarranted praise will only make you feel worse.' No gold stars in our house.

My perspective on the job was simple: I visited Blair International two or three days a week. The rest of my time was spent in a dreamy haze of discovery – of Sarah, of myself, of London – and none of what I did at Blair seemed important. So I didn't much care whether the next sentence from Jennifer began with ‘but' or ‘and'.

‘And so the question is, how can we get the young scorers up to this same standard? Ros and I have been wondering how you might feel about taking that on as a challenge. Some kind of training program for the younger people, perhaps? Workshops? Coaching? What are your thoughts?'

I don't often recognise or respond well to significant moments when they come. I'm as guilty as anyone of composing my wisest and wittiest ripostes a day or two after they were needed. But this was a moment to be savoured. With nothing to lose – and, I imagined, nothing much to gain, either – I was being invited to express my opinion about something on which I had come to hold very strong opinions indeed. The question was: had Jelly told Jennifer about my ‘watching brief' and asked her to raise this issue with me? Probably not, though this was too good an opportunity to pass up, whether Jelly was in on it or not. If Jennifer passed my comments on to Jelly, so much the better: I had never been entirely comfortable with the idea of being Jelly's mole.

There was a useful hiatus while Jennifer's assistant brought us coffee. I glanced around the white office, as cold and crisp as the reception area, though I was relieved to see Jennifer's desk was on legs that actually rested on the floor. There was a soundless monitor tuned to Bloomberg on a credenza behind her desk and on the desk itself sat a wafer-thin Mac notebook. The desk was otherwise clear. (‘Tidy desk, tidy mind,' the boss of the first office I worked in used to say. ‘Empty desk, empty mind,' one of my colleagues said to him on the day she resigned.) Only then did I notice a white cat sitting motionless in the corner of the office, almost invisible against the white wall. It was hard to tell whether it was alive or stuffed.

‘I appreciate what you're getting at,' I said, ‘but, frankly, I think the real challenge is quite different. The BI is a clever concept from a marketing point of view. I have no doubt it's a useful selling tool for your consultants. But the problem isn't with asking young and inexperienced people to write the assessments – especially of people they've never met. No, the problem, as I see it, is with the process itself.'

Jennifer had arranged her face and cocked her head on one side in a way that suggested she might once have been told – perhaps this was also at some management course – that she needed to appear more receptive. This was a woman who monitored herself very closely; a woman I found it hard to imagine in the throes of passion, in spite of her excellent legs, now on generous display.

‘Our structure,' she said, straightening her back and raising her chin, ‘is based on the medical pathology model. You send off some material – a urine sample, blood, a piece of skin, whatever – for analysis and the pathologist tests it and writes a report. Never meets the patient. Doesn't need to. That was the genesis of this idea, and that's how we've sold it to our clients. Very successfully, I might add. Our consultants are like GPs who have this data at their disposal to help them draw a conclusion. But they don't have to do the lab testing themselves. The psychologists do the tests and the juniors score them. You can't say it isn't efficient – our throughput is astonishing compared with the other firms in the Yelland group.'

‘I'm not denying it's efficient. I'm questioning whether the efficiency of the machine might actually be getting in the way of the quality of the product. May I ask if you're a psychologist yourself, Jennifer?' This was big talk, coming from a casual part-time scorer. But Jennifer was taking me seriously – perhaps it was my age being so close to hers; perhaps it was my connection with Jelly (which she probably assumed was stronger than it really was).

‘Goodness me, no. Kenneth would never let a psychologist run any of his businesses. No offence, Tom, but he's quite uncompromising on this point. The Beatles needed Brian Epstein to manage them, he tells us repeatedly, though in somewhat more colourful language. I'm here as a chief executive, the Epstein, charged with building the business. Blair is the newest venture in the Yelland stable and Kenneth wanted something radically different from the others. They've rather moved away from traditional testing as their centrepiece, so that's left a niche for us. It's an old model, but we've refined it. Streamlined it.'

‘I see. Hence the BI.'

‘Absolutely. A clear, simple number based on a combination of proven tests. Bolstered by that succinct commentary. I'm not worried about the numbers – our clients love those numbers. It's the standard of your commentaries that's opened my eyes to how we might do even better.'

‘The best stuff I've written has actually been the result of chatting to the psychologists who did the testing. But even they felt rather at a loss, never having actually interviewed the applicants. And the consultants I've met aren't really qualified to do diagnostic interviewing. I think they just chat to the two or three applicants with the highest BI scores to check they're not unduly weird before passing them on to the client.'

I explained how I thought we could achieve a more sensible integration of the process, allowing the psychologists to use more of their skills, leaving the high-priced consultants to stick to selling. We could reduce the number of scorers and get everyone working more collegially. It was a solution that would save money, raise morale, develop the younger people, and deliver a superior product without forcing Blair to abandon its test-based niche in the market. Who wouldn't warm to it?

As I outlined all this to Jennifer, the emotional temperature in the room dropped to zero. She went through the motions of responding, explaining, as to a kindergarten class, the cost of a restructure, the legal and emotional ramifications of redundancies, and the risk of doing anything that might compromise ‘the uniqueness of our offering'.

She stood, and I followed suit.

‘Give some thought to my proposition, Tom, will you?'

‘Your proposition?' Distracted by my enthusiasm for my own proposal, I could no longer recall why I had been summoned.

‘A training program for the less experienced scorers. We want to bring their commentaries up to the standard you've set for us. Let me know when you have something to show me, will you?'

The white cat in the corner proved it was alive by blinking at me and turning its head away.